Saturday, September 02, 2006
Amid hopes of easing rising tensions that threaten to further destabilize the anarchic nation, the Islamists avoided explicit calls for specific official posts but made clear they wanted recognition.
The Islamist delegation to the much-delayed second meeting between the two sides said it had the right to rule the lawless nation but had recognized the legitimacy of the transitional administration in a gesture of good will.
Delegation chief Ibrahim Hussein Addow said Mogadishu’s Islamic courts had won authority to create a government when they seized the capital from warlords in June and the rapidly expanding their territory in southern Somalia.
“The victory achieved, by and large, entitles the Union of Islamic Courts to form a government of their own choice,” he said in a speech at the opening of the talks in a Khartoum hotel.
“But because of our good intentions, the courts recognised the legitimacy of the transitional government,” Addow said Saturday. “However, the courts are a real power to be reckoned with that undeniably exist on the ground.
“A compromise solution is, therefore, needed between these two Somali entities,” he said.
There was no immediate response to Addow’s comments from the government but its delegation chief, parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, said his team was ready to forge true peace with the Islamists.
“We are all Somalis and we have to realise that it is our responsibility to advance peace and harmony among Somalis,” he said. “My commitment to peace through reconciliation is total.
“I am calling on all sides to understand the value of peace and make this conference a reality,” Aden said.
Saturday’s start of the talks came a day after Arab League and Sudanese diplomats shuttled between the two sides hoping to forge at least the beginning of a consensus on a compromise despite deep divisions.
“We call on all the concerned parties … to agree on peace and resolve their differences amicably,” Arab League representative Samir Hussni said at the opening ceremony. “You have to take responsibility to restore peace.”
Mediators said they hoped to build on a mutual recognition and truce pact reached at the first meeting on June 22 after the Islamists seized Mogadishu from warlords in fierce battles.
Their agenda calls for discussions on power-sharing, security, politics, social affairs and reconstruction as well as the role of the international community in restoring security to the country.
But the two sides remain deeply at odds over several critical issues and have accused each other of repeated violations of the June accord.
The government complains the Islamists are expanding their territory and enforcement of strict Sharia law in a direct challenge to its legitimacy while the Islamists accuse the government of inviting in Ethiopian troops to back it.
In addition, they are at loggerheads over the proposed deployment of regional peacekeepers to shore up the government’s limited authority, a plan vehemently opposed by the Islamists who have vowed to fight any foreign force.
Addow reiterated those positions on Saturday.
“The foreign interference and the presence of foreign forces on Somali soil, some of which are already there, is a recipe for another civil war and not the pursuit of reconciliation and reconstruction,” he said.
The Islamists are not represented in the government, which was created two years ago in Kenya but has wracked by infighting and unable to assert control over much of the country outside its seat of Baidoa, northwest of the capital.
The Islamic courts have moved to fill the power vacuum and as they have reached beyond the city to take control of much of southern Somalia, they have fuelled fears of a Taliban-style takeover of the country.
Several diplomats have suggested that differences could be resolved if the Islamists were offered cabinet positions but it remained unclear on Saturday whether the government would consider such a step.
Somalia has been without a functioning central authority since strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted in 1991, plunging the nation into chaos with rival warlords battling for control.
Source: AFP, Sept 2, 2006
